The CEO Is In: Pharma Exec Started as Physician

How do executives stay organized? What are their management strategies? And what do they do for fun? Executive Suite seeks answers to the behind-the-scenes questions.

Belén Garijo leads Merck Serono, a Germany-based biopharmaceutical company. Merck Serono (no relation to Merck & Co., the American drug maker) has more than 15,000 employees worldwide and markets drugs that focus on fertility, cancer and multiple sclerosis. Its parent, Merck KGaA, is publicly traded on the German stock exchange. Edited excerpts follow.

You were a physician for six years before moving to the pharmaceutical industry. Why did you make that move?

I am from a generation [in Spain] that was confronted with a very high output of physicians that couldn’t get jobs so easily. So after being trained for many, many years you were confronted with the fact that you couldn’t continue working in a hospital. This is the reason why I looked at different alternatives. I saw [pharmaceuticals] as an opportunity to continue to develop myself and serve the patients from a different place.